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<\/a><\/p>\n“How can rain be cozy and fun for us? At home we revel at the idea of staying inside and watching movies under big comforters… how could that possibly be fair?” Tears fell from my eyes as I was slapped in the face by the inequality of this world. For the last two months I had been fully aware of the poverty the people I had come to love were living in but for some reason it became so much more real in that moment. Rain falls EVERYWHERE I thought to myself but\u00a0 when I called the people at my praxis site they said “We are cold and wet, nobody can get to work, we are running out of food. The kids are getting sick and walls have fallen in some people’s homes”. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that rain…something that is completely natural, could have such different effects on people solely because of the area of the world they live in. I thought of the big screen TV’s at home that cost as much as building homes that would protect the families of Cedro from the rain. I was infuriated. I was mad at the world for the inequalities that exist, I was mad at the United States for having so much when these people have so little, for thinking rain was fun when in places like El Salvador it takes lives, I was mad at myself for never feeling this way before, for being helpless, and for being able to enjoy rain and turn on my blinders to the suffering of the rest of the world.<\/p>\n
It rained for ten days straight. Thirty eight lives were lost and more than thirty thousand people were evacuated from their homes. We stayed in our warm houses trying to figure out what we could do to help. We sent letters to friends and family at home asking for donations but deep down we knew the problems were much deeper than anything we could solve with one time donations. The anger was ignited by a deep love for these people, a new found passion for social justice and equality. It wasn’t as easy to turn the blinders on when I could hear little three year old Christopher’s laughter or Nina Santos telling us she walked 45 minutes up the hill in the rain because “los ninos tienen que comer.”<\/p>\n
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These people had become my family and as I listened to the rain fall and all I could do was wait, I knew that I had to keep the passion igniting the anger alive. I had to find a way to carry it home with me and continue to work for equality, justice and solutions for the deep rooted structural problems, not just be angry and in tears writing letters to my family for money when it rained. The rain made the reality of poverty and inequality painstakingly clear to me and my community urged me to think about how I could take this anger home with me, what could I do with it that would be meaningful?<\/p>\n
I spent two months after that even more in awe at the resiliency of the Salvadoran people, continuing to fall in love with them every day and I shed so many tears when I had to say goodbye. They taught me more than I have ever learned from a text book or my entire 15 years of schooling. They taught me about vulnerability, community, family, love, pride, commitment, hard work,\u00a0 faith and inequality. They taught me how to be resilient and to “sigue adelante” even when to the rest of the world it seemed like there was no reason to keep going. They exposed me to my own privilege and my own poverty in light of their extreme wisdom and spiritual wealth. Falling in love with them came hand in hand with the knowledge that I would commit my life to others, working for equality, justice and the improvement of lives across the world. It was not a decision but simply an understanding, as I fell in love with the Salvadoran people I knew this was only the beginning of a journey of learning about the world and finding ways to best use my skills to serve this world.<\/p>\n
I arrived at Santa Clara freshmen year eager to get involved in every single possible thing. I was that girl who signed up for every single service program through SCCAP, told my friends I might not be home for break cause I wanted to go on an immersion, looked into summer options months ahead of … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"